Basketball

by Alexander Wolff

  So the boy grew up, he went to as many local college games as he could. He kept score, all the points and fouls, on the radio games, too—in anticipation of the big tournament. One March night in 1956, during the broadcast of an NCAA first-round game, he was forced to leave hearth and home and go with his family to an ice-cream parlor for dessert. Normally he would have loved this sojourn, for the parlor had the best homemade ice cream that ever had filled his chubby face. But that rainy night the boy refused to go into the parlor. He sat outside in the car and listened to the end of the game—N.C. State versus Canisius. It went four overtimes, and before it was over (Canisius, 79–78) the announcer, Bill Mazer, went completely hoarse. Sitting alone in the old family Nash, the boy thought this was all fairly amazing; that this national college basketball tournament must really be something. The best part of all was that nobody knew about it but him.

  Soon the boy chose his college partly because he figured it might get him closer to the NCAA tournament. And he may even have chosen a career, a way of life, so that he could take part in it. After all, he still knew the secret of the NCAAs, something nobody else seemed to know.

  In the mid-’50s the NCAA was still begging the Associated Press to move the tournament bracket on the wire, and even as late as 1972—four years after the Houston–UCLA game in the Astrodome drew 52,693 and supposedly transfixed the country—only a small portion of the nation’s TV households got to see both semifinal games in the Final Four in Los Angeles. “A regional sport,” the networks kept calling college basketball. Fine, the man kept thinking, they’ll never figure it out, and it’s still my event, to have and to hold.

  But just the other day the man stumbled upon some bittersweet figures. For a long time, he was forced to admit, the secret had been out. In 1973, the championship game was moved from its traditional Saturday afternoon to Monday night prime time. By 1981, NBC was paying $10 million to televise the tournament, and a year after that, CBS swiped the package, adding far more tournament games than had ever been shown before. This year CBS is paying $32 million to the NCAA; each Final Four school will receive about $825,000.

  Amid the swirl of numbers out of the 1985 Final Four, the man found these very instructive: Over the breadth of a year, the NCAA received 140,000 applications in the mail, each requesting four seats at $43 per, which meant the organization could have sold 560,000 tickets worth $2.4 million to the two sessions in Lexington. And there was also this: The 1985 radio broadcast drew an adult (over-18) audience of 20,280,000 listeners, roughly 12% of the entire adult population of the U.S.

  Uh, oh. With that the man took himself back, metaphysically at least, to that rainy night outside the ice-cream parlor. But it wasn’t the same. Never again could he sit in the car and listen to his tournament on the radio and consider himself alone with his closet passion. There was nothing to do but go in and order a banana split.

  In the history of the Final Four there are as many landmark years—turning points that have helped ingrain the event in the American consciousness—as there are favorite teams, players and plays:

  1942 Stanford–Dartmouth, the first true meeting of East and West, the one-handed shot in ascendance.

  1946 Oklahoma A & M–North Carolina, the first time four teams converged at the finals site.

  1951 Kentucky–Kansas State, the first expansion, a doubling of the field to 16 teams, primarily because Adolph Rupp bitched so when his Kentucky team went uninvited in ’50.

  1957 and 1963 North Carolina–Kansas and Loyola–Cincinnati, the giant-killing upsets, the audience-enhancing thriller climaxes.

  1966 Texas Western–Kentucky, confirmation of the black player’s dominance. “We could all stop counting then,” says Al McGuire.

  1969 UCLA–Purdue, the never-before, never-again, third Outstanding Player award to the great Lew Alcindor.

  1974 North Carolina State–UCLA, the kingdom overthrown.

  1979 Michigan State–Indiana State, Bird–Magic and Ray Meyer to boot.

  1982 North Carolina–Georgetown, 61,612 in heaven right here on earth, the infant Jordan over the infant Ewing, the Dean finally come true.

  Still and all, two years, ’75 and ’80, define the tremendous explosion of interest in the national tournament more accurately than any others. For fully a decade, UCLA had crystallized the event into a David-Goliath confrontation. The Bruins of coach John Wooden were a national entity: a Yankees/Cowboys/Celtics–type target to love or hate but never to neglect. Doubtless, UCLA gave the NCAAs significance and verve. But by the early ’70s—in the midst of the school’s 10 championships, seven in a row—the tournament seemed to be running in place; it was in danger of losing its allure. Monotony had set in.

  Any teams starring Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton would have earned their keep anywhere, but it is also true that under the tournament’s old and rigid regional format—West versus Midwest in one bracket, East versus Mideast in the other—UCLA had only to win the Pacific Eight (easily the toughest league west of the Mississippi), then get by an occasional Long Beach State to reach the championship game.

  But in ’73 the NCAA began rotating the regional matchups in the Final Four, and sure enough, in ’74 UCLA had to face its Grim Reaper, North Carolina State, in the semis. Then in ’75 the tournament fathers went a huge step further, expanding the field from 25 to 32 teams and inviting more than the standard one team per conference. By ’80 the NCAA field had been enlarged to 48 and, more important, the tournament draw was balanced by a seeding system whereby any team from anywhere could be placed in any one of the four regions.

  In the 1975 tournament, for the first time, UCLA had to play five games to win it all. With a last gasp—and it was a gasp—the Bruins barely escaped Montana in the second round and, Dame Fortune abounding, both Louisville and Kentucky in the Final Four at San Diego. Then Wooden, the Wizard of Westwood, finally retired. In the next four years, 16 different teams advanced to the Final Four. The NCAA’s expansion balancing had done the trick. From that came other improvements. Through 1981—43 tournaments—there were but three one-point games in the final. And then: three of the next four championship games decided by a single bucket. The shocking victories by N.C. State in ’83 and Villanova in ’85 are vivid reminders of the inherent possibilities in sport—of the underdog factor, of surprise, bewilderment, drama. Of life itself.

  What the expansionists created was not so much a newfangled Final Four as a magical Final Month. And even if there is little mystery left, there is a good side to that, too. “When we played Wilt in ’57,” says Tommy Kearns of North Carolina’s undefeated NCAA championship squad, “he was a god, one of the most famous guys in the country. Wilt the Stilt, jeez. But we had never really seen him.” A god like Kansas’s Wilt Chamberlain could never develop in darkness today. Because of summer camps, all-star games and the dusk-to-dawn explosion of cable TV, college basketball players from coast to coast know each other as brothers, angling for a chance to show each other up in late March.

  The very first national collegiate championship was won by Oregon in 1939 when Howard Hobson’s Tall Firs—who towered an outrageous 6′4″, 6′9″, 6′4″ across the tree line—cut down Ohio State 46–33 at Patten Gym in Evanston, Ill. Buckeye captain James Hull later said his team had simply been “not interested in playing in this tournament. It was just so new . . . unheard of.” The Buckeyes themselves had not even heard of it until after they had won the Big Ten because their coach, Harold (Oley) Olsen, whose idea the national tournament was, did not bother to tell them. Oley, Oley in free. The Firs, meanwhile, had earlier in the season barnstormed across the country, all the way to New York City, where The New York Times took one look at center Urgel (Slim) Wintermute and labeled the team the “Giants from the Far West.” Wintermute is believed to be the charter member of the charter all-name team.

  For the first seven years of the tournament there was no such thing as a Final Four, or even a final four; only two teams advanced to the final game f
rom a pair of four-team regions. Oregon won that first final but nearly lost the championship trophy when 5'8" Bobby Anet, a fern among the firs, dived for a loose ball over the top of a courtside table and clipped the basketball player figurine off the top of the trophy. “When they presented the trophy to us . . . they had to hold the figure on top. It was a two-handed presentation,” said John Dick, who had led the winners with 15 points. Wintermute was mostly mute, finishing with four.

  Last April, Hull, now an orthodontist in Columbus, received a call at his office from a bar in New Jersey. “Thersh not much differensh between then and now in thish NCAA basketball shtuff, ish there?” the caller slurred. “Thish guy Ewing got 14 points in the finalsh and losht and you got 14 in the finalsh and losht. No differensh.”

  Hull was kind enough not to tell the drunk that there was a difference. Hull scored 12 points in the 1939 championship game.

  Contradictions. In the 1974 semifinals at Greensboro, UCLA had blown an 11-point lead over N.C. State not once but twice in regulation and a seven-point lead in the second overtime. The Wolfpack had an insurmountable 80–75 lead when Bill Walton scored his final college basket of championship play. As he loped down the floor with four seconds left—the string of seven straight championships broken, the Bruin dynasty crumbling—Walton nodded to teammate Greg Lee, as if to say, “It’s over . . . yeah . . . but it’s O.K.”

  Nearly 12 years later, Walton said of such moments, “Those are the ones that really kill you. . . . At UCLA you didn’t play to win a conference or to come in second. Your goal was the championship. [The defeat] really stays with you. I was really down that day. When I think about it—like now—I get down.”

  In the 1979 Final Four in Salt Lake City, Larry Bird of Indiana State, who had not talked much all season, was chirping like a canary about his 33–0 Sycamores. “The Final Four means more to my teammates than it does to me,” he said. “I thought we should have been here last year. If we win or lose it don’t make no difference to me. I’m gonna get my money anyway.”

  When it was over, 75–64 to Magic Johnson and Michigan State, Bird sat on the bench sobbing into a towel.

  Doggie Julian, the Holy Cross coach, in the locker room before the 1947 NCAA championship game: “Dermy, you start, and George, you start, and Kaftan, you start, and O’Connell, you start, and Greek, you start.” Both Dermy and O’Connell were one Dermott O’Connell while George, Kaftan and Greek were all George Kaftan. But the Cross figured it out, put five men on the court (freshman Bob Cousy came off the bench) and beat Oklahoma 58–47.

  Trivia. Who is the only man from a fourth-place team to win the Outstanding Player award in the Final Four? Answer: Jerry Chambers of Utah in 1966.

  The Coach. Don Haskins was 36 years old when his Texas Western Miners won the national championship. That was 20 years ago, and Haskins—his school is now known as Texas–El Paso—hasn’t been back. Hasn’t been close.

  It was a different era then—a line from the 1966 Final Four preview in this magazine read: “All seven of the Texas Western regulars are Negroes. . . .” The victory, over Kentucky’s all-white squad (Rupp’s last of six Final Four teams, and one of only two to lose), shocked the nation but, as Haskins says, “It was surprising to everyone but us. Our team simply thought they’d never lose.”

  The thing was, Haskins seemed to recognize every nuance of his team’s opportunity. He says now, “I should have enjoyed it more.” But back then he was an unknown coach from an unknown school, venturing into the vast unknown. Aspirin and cigarettes were his staples at the team motel in College Park, Md., the Final Four site, and Haskins constantly mused over the once-in-a-lifetime experience. He called himself “a young punk” and explained how it was “a thrill just playing against Mr. Rupp, let alone beating him.” More than once he concluded, “This may never happen to me again.”

  Observers were no less stunned at the shrill way he treated his crew—among them Nevil (The Shadow) Shed and David (Big Daddy D) Lattin—than at the players’ meek obeisance. “Isn’t this the laziest bunch you’ve ever seen?” the coach yelled at a practice after benching Bobby Joe Hill, the little guard who would steal the title right away from Kentucky All-America Louie Dampier.

  At a team meeting before the semifinal game with Utah, everyone was sitting around a motel room when Haskins looked over in the corner, and there was Hill . . . fast asleep, a toothpick hanging out of his mouth.

  Of Rupp, Haskins said, “I really wonder whether he knows who I am yet.” Then, on championship eve, his thoughts were disrupted by something else: a gang of Maryland students carousing in the motel parking lot. Haskins was afraid they would wake his players, so he invited the besotted collegians into his room. And then, through the early hours of the day he would win the national championship, he drank beer and shot the breeze with a group of kids he had never seen before.

  Finally, Haskins offered them some brews to get them to go, and they did, quietly. “Once in a lifetime,” he said, leaning back with a last beer. “You know, this is once in a lifetime.” A friend pointed out that Haskins was young and that there would be other Final Four teams for him to coach. “No chance,” he said. “Mr. Rupp is 64 and he made it a lot, but it’s probably going to be just once in a lifetime for me.”

  Student athletes. In 1942, three members of Stanford’s NCAA title-winning squad were sent final exams, to be administered by coach Everett Dean at the championship site in Kansas City. In 1980, Louisville’s Wiley Brown left his artificial thumb on the breakfast table the morning of the championship game in Indianapolis; it was later retrieved from a garbage dumpster. In 1974, Marquette’s Bo Ellis tapped the grotesque and enormous cardboard head of the female member of UCLA’s mascot tandem, Josephine Bruin, and inquired, “Hey, if you be cute, how ’bout a date?”

  Was Cinderella a Mormon? In 1944, Utah was led by freshman Arnie Ferrin, the great-grandson of a pioneer who had struggled across the mountains with Brigham Young to found Salt Lake City. Initially, the Utes had turned down the NCAA tournament—the Final Four was to be held at New York City’s Madison Square Garden that year—to accept a berth in the more lucrative NIT, also at the Garden. But they were beaten in the first round of that tournament. Because an auto accident had caused the Arkansas squad to withdraw from the NCAAs, however, Utah was once again invited to fill the NCAA field. This time Utah accepted, and the Utes went on to win the NCAAs. Ferrin, dazzling blond hair flashing through the Garden haze, scored 22 points in the 42–40 overtime championship victory over Dartmouth. Then the Utes beat NIT winner St. John’s in the annual Red Cross “Champion of Champions” face-off in the Garden.

  The Utes’ victory was the second of three straight for the NCAA champ over the NIT champ. By the following season, after Oklahoma A & M’s 7-foot Bob (Foothills) Kurland outsmarted DePaul’s 6′10″ George Mikan in history’s first Duel of Titans and the Aggies completed the trifecta, the NCAA tournament had achieved runaway dominance.

  Contrasts. 1983: North Carolina State coach Jim Valvano on reaching the Final Four: “Awesome . . . the promised land. . . . It’s akin to a religious experience. . . . Just saying it, the alliteration, the Final Four, is great. . . . Ring the doorbell at my house and you hear the last 44 seconds of our championship game. . . . If anybody enjoyed it more than I did, everything about it, it had to be sinful.”

  1982: Eric Smith of Georgetown, whose team was quartered in Biloxi, Miss., 85 miles from the Final Four site, was asked if he missed being in New Orleans. “I don’t know what I’ve missed. Can’t you see? I ain’t here.”

  Trivia. Name the two players who participated in the Final Four for two different schools. Answer: Bob Bender, Indiana (’76) and Duke (’78), and Steve Krafcisin, North Carolina (’77) and Iowa (’80).

  The Referee. Hank Nichols, chairman of the education department at Villanova in civilian life, has worked in six Final Fours and was a standby in three others. “I don’t know if the phenomenon of the tournament can be explained,�
�� he says. “In 1974—the first time I was a standby—I remember the look of disbelief on the faces of the UCLA players. They couldn’t believe anybody could beat them. In 1975 the semifinal between UCLA and Louisville was a smooth-flowing game, maybe one of the best I’ve ever officiated. It came down to the end and the Louisville kid [Terry Howard] hadn’t missed a foul shot all season long. A lefthanded kid, he was in to dribble, pass and get fouled. But he missed the front end of a one-and-one that would have given Louisville the game. It was kind of sad.

  “In the final that year, UCLA-Kentucky, I reported a technical foul on Dave Meyers, and John Wooden got up hollering. I couldn’t believe it. I turned to one of my partners and said, ‘I always thought he was a real gentleman.’ But his eyes were rolling and he wanted to get me. [Wooden screamed at Nichols, ‘You crook!’] That was kind of a shocker.

  “Then there was 1982, North Carolina–Georgetown. I remember calling goaltending on Ewing on the first five or six North Carolina shots. I turned to my partners and said, ‘I wonder how long he’s going to do that? I wonder if he thinks we’re not going to see it?’ Then I called a foul that John Thompson didn’t like and I knew he was going to give me guff, so when the Georgetown cheerleaders came on court, I got right in the middle of the biggest guys and hid so he couldn’t find me.

  “And 1983, Houston-Louisville, the semis. When Houston had a pass intercepted, Guy Lewis got up and threw a towel right in front of me. ‘Hank, I didn’t mean it, I swear,’ he said. I said, ‘Coach, I don’t mean this personally either, but that’s a T.’ But what a dunking show! The guys on both teams were congratulating each other as they ran upcourt, saying, ‘Helluva dunk, helluva dunk!’ It was so devastating I ran right out of the way after being underneath the basket on the first one. I got out of there fast, right back in with the band.”